The Bleeding Obvious

I begin to wonder if it is worth trying to argue with people about certain things, or indeed at all. There are many people with whom you cannot argue, because they do not listen, would not understand, and are not interested. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since most people have better things to do than consider abstractions of no consequence to their lives. But there are people who try to argue, who have opinions which they try to defend, and whose position is apparently open to debate, but who are capable of understanding that their position might in fact be open to question.

There is a certain type of socialist with whom it is impossible to discuss education because they believe that all children are born with the same intellectual potential and it is only the difference in the quality of the schools that the working class attend that prevents them achieving what the professional classes achieve.

There are people who genuinely believe that all money belongs to the government and that everything we do not pay in tax is stolen from the workers/people/state etc; it is impossible to explain basic economics or even morality to such people, and it is not worth trying. There are people, some of whom have influence, who believe that the absolute truth is the most recent thought that flitted through their mind. Some are astute enough to make a living from these fleeting thoughts, but usually they do not realize that they do not in fact have anything to say.

They do not, of course, have the slightest understanding of reason or science. It is perfectly clear that they do not seek truth in any form, they start from a belief, then attempt to use the twisted, vacuous language they have been taught to defend that belief from an arbitrary starting point, following a process which is often more stream of consciousness than constructed argument. Not only do they strengthen their own belief this way, by imagining that they have in some sense it proved it, but the random thoughts they have had along the way, loosely tied to and perhaps vaguely expressing equally random emotions, then become part of the dogma, to be used by themselves and others as though they were demonstrable truths, fundamental facts about the world.

This process is not thought, it can take you nowhere and prove nothing. It is entirely useless and exists for the self-glorification, self-satisfaction, and professional justification of these creatures. They are destroying parts of our universities, and the future of generations of fine minds. But it is not possible to argue with them; they have imposed rules of debate which means they never have to address criticism, they only denounce the critic. Our target should be the proper thinkers, the real scientists and academics who share the campus with them and sit on committees with them. They must be ridiculed, exposed and expelled from the Academy by those who have the power to do it.

If there is no truth, there is no knowledge, no understanding, nothing means anything, nothing can be tested or learnt from, nothing can have any more importance than anything else, nothing can actually matter, unless you shout louder, whine more and scream abuse more relentlessly than those who do not share your view. The cultural studies mob, dedicated to the pursuit of ignorance, the ennoblement of the inept and the imposition of incompetence on their students, have found in post-modernist relativism and its spawn a magnificent vehicle for creating their own unassailable superiority, precisely by these means, shouting, whining and accusing.

I do not have to fight for tenure. I make my own living outside the Academy and I have the inestimable luxury of ignoring them, exposing their errors or laughing at them, as I see fit. It is the best weapon. They do not understand criticism, since they have created rules for themselves which allow them to be always, automatically right, and they denounce reason and objectivity as tools of oppression which rob them of their freedom to (be truly themselves, reclaim their past and their present, glory in their stupidity, vilify anyone they don’t like, make a living from their prejudices, insert whining grievance here).

The Academy is ours; it rightly belongs to the thinkers, the seekers of knowledge, the purveyors of truth and the tools of thought to the young. It is not theirs. Let us throw them out.